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Supporting gender sensitive service provision: FAO’s Gender and Rural Advisory Services Assessment Tool

Year of publication 2016

Pages 2p.

Author H. Petrics

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet

ISBN No ISBN

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) Rural advisory services (RAS) can help women and men farmers to increase their yields, connect with markets, and take advantage of agripreneurship opportunities. Yet, globally, women have less access to RAS than men, and the information, technologies and services provided tend to be less relevant to the needs of female farmers. To help organizations reflect on and improve their service provision for women, FAO has developed the Gender and Rural Advisory Services Assessment Tool (GRAST), which as sesses the gender-sensitivity of RAS programs at the enabling environment, organizational, and individual (advisor and client) levels. This tool gives to RAS organizations and institutions a way to identify concretely the strengths and weaknesses of a program from a gender perspective. This can be a basis for implementing institutional reforms to improve gender equity, as well as a means to share good practices and lessons learned within the organization and with others. The GRAST can be used to assess all types of advisory service programs, including those focusing on business development and agripreneurship. The side event is hosted jointly by FAO and INGENAES (Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agriculture Extension Services), a USAID-funded consortium of universities and institutions, has been collaborating with FAO to test and validate the GRAST in Bangladesh, with a particularly focus on the organizational level of the tool. The side event will introduce participants to t he GRAST and, through presentations and discussions, it will provide an overview on how the tool can be used. The event will also focus on sharing preliminary results and lessons learned from the GRAST validation case studies carried out in Ethiopia, India, Bangladesh and Peru.

Language English

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    This publication is the third one in a row, following the background paper 'Enhancing the potential of family farming for poverty reduction and food security through gender-sensitive rural advisory services' and the Gender and Rural Advisory Services Assessment Tool (GRAST). It includes three cases studies from three continents and the good practices for promoting gender equality through RAS of the studied organziations as well as a collection of recommendations drawn from the good practices. The objective is to support RAS providers to adopt and adapt these good practices so that they can design and deliver truly gender-responsive services. Improving rural women's access to RAS can close the gender gap in agriculture. However, to do this both RAS clients and providers need to overcome several challenges. While the challenges women face to access RAS have been widely documented, there is a dearth of information regarding the good practices for designing and delivering fully gender-responsive RAS. This paper fills this gap by presenting good practices as well as systematized recommendations following the five areas of analysis of the GRAST. The case studies confirm that to provide truly gender-equitable RAS, holistic approach and systemic change are needed: the entire RAS system, including policies and institutions, staff attitudes and capacities must change. The perspective of gender equality need to become integral guiding principle within the enabling policy and organizational environment and culture.
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